Development of a High Fidelity Lunar Soil Simulant

Abstract

As NASA prepares for the future exploration activities on the Moon, there is a growing need to develop higher fidelity lunar soil simulants that can accurately reproduce the properties and behavior of the lunar soil. One of the biggest limitations of current lunar soil simulants (such as JSC‐1A lunar regolith simulant), is the lack of particles that match the morphology and other unique properties of agglutinates which constitute a significant portion of the lunar soil. Agglutinates are individual particles that are aggregates of smaller lunar soil particles (mineral grains, glasses, and even older agglutinates) bonded together by vesicular, flow‐banded glass. ORBITEC has developed a process to create simulated agglutinate particles from various feedstock materials, including existing lunar soil simulants. The ultimate objective of this work is to develop a large‐scale production process that can be applied to existing and new lunar soil simulant materials to create agglutinate‐particles that exhibit many of the unique features of lunar agglutinates. This process will significantly increase the fidelity of the existing and future lunar regolith simulants.